WiFi On The Road IS An Important Tool

If I relied on just wi-fi, I'd only have internet 2 maybe 3 nights a week. Jack in the box may have free wi-fi, but show me a jack in the box with truck parking.

As for what brand of laptop, any brand will do, but I always make sure I get a business class laptop, not the consumer grade you find at the retail stores. For instance the Dell Latitude over the Dell Inspiron, or the Toshiba Tecra over the Satellite. The Latitude and Tecra (Dell and Toshiba are the only two brands I have owned) are both models tailor-made for business users. They are sturdier and can hold up to the beating riding around in the truck will put on them. Plus they don't really cost any more than their retail counterparts, you just have to order them online. My first Laptop was the Toshiba, and it's at home in a closet right now. It's about ten years old, has Windows 98 on it and still works like it did when it was brand new. Since then, I've had 3 different Dell latitudes, the first two I sold. As far as I know they are still in use today.

 

Don't know if I mentioned it in this thread, but using the wife's T-mobile plan, we can add a blackberry 8020 for $99 (two year) or $150 (1 year contract) and $10 for the extra (third) line and $25 for the wifi. It will tether to a laptop, so I'll have a phone, PDA, and internet with or w/o the laptop, for $35/mo.
Looks pretty sweet to me.

 

I've been told that tethering the BB may be problematic, and not to call the company (Tmobile) because tethering is discouraged because it can slow down the network if everyone does it. So they may be little help there. The 8020 model they offered seems to be a lost sheep of the fold: I can find very little on it. It could be that since it doesn't have a camera, it wasn't that popular. Came out in 2004 I think.
Using just the BB alone for net will be very problematic too, as it has a slow scroll function from reports I've seen. I'm looking for other options yet.

 

I called T-Mobile a while back to get the info on tethering my BB Curve to my laptop and they gave me the info that I needed with no problem and told me that I could use all I wanted because it was part of my plan. (of course I was talking on the BB and couldn't get it to work with my own hand-written instructions once I hung up, but that's another story)

 

All wireless carriers offer this now. Problem is the blackberry browser is not the same as used on a laptop so when you connect as a tether you will see basically your blackberry browser on your laptop and is not nearly efficient as laptop wirelss card connection to internet. I have yet to find which one is the best option but i am looking to do something almost right away. I have been researching this for awhile also and have almost drawn my conclusions. Will let you know what i decide to do.

 

I successfully set this up and tested it a few minutes ago. Basically just open the Blackberry software on the PC, then create a dialup connection and dial "*99#" using the Blackberry as the modem. Disabled "IP Header Compression" in advanced tcp/ip properties and it worked like a charm.

For the user I just used my email account login for tmo (first part only, no @blahblah.com).

 

I'm not following you. The Blackberry is setup as a modem. The computer only knows it has an internet connection, so any browser you choose to use works. It's not that bad compared to other forms of connecting, I don't know how hulu would work on it however as I never tested the speed (needed a driver for my Sprint wireless card after vista sp2 update).

 

Not sure what my coworker was using with his. All I know is when he was showing me how it worked from his blackberry it was not like just being connected from a laptop on a normal connection. He might have been doing something wrong too. Not sure.

 

I do not want to start an argument here and I am not going to comment on any of this gentleman's post. I merely want to point out that it actually costs an incredible amount of money to run large scale hotspot services.

There is a lot more to it than a "Gateway" and a "DSL Line".